2025-2026 Theme
The Art of Connecting:
Storytelling, Collaboration, and Community
Hosted by UNCG’s Department of Communication Studies
No matter where or how our stories started or how different we may seem, communication sparks connection.
With a focus on storytelling, podcasting, community-based media, and local music and arts-based collaborations, our speakers and performers invite you to a series of live and interactive events designed to help us share more engaging stories and create the kinds of connections that can make a difference in our world.
Fall 2025
Jacoby Cochran & ‘In The Beat of The Night’
Part keynote lecture, part hip hop show: Jacoby Cochran and ‘In the Beat of the Night’ help us tell better stories by sharing their own.
KEYNOTE: October 1, 2025 | 6 p.m.
WORKSHOP: October 2, 2025 | 2 p.m.
Spring 2026
Dr. Lynn Harter & Peacehaven Farm
Part keynote, part arts & crafts event!
KEYNOTE: March 24, 2026 | 2 p.m.
WORKSHOP: March 25, 2026 | 10 a.m.
All events Will Be held in Elliott University Center (EUC).
Free and open to the public. Free parking in the Walker Parking Deck.
Please contact David Errera at dserrera@uncg.edu or 336.334.5297 at least one week prior to the event to request disability accommodations. All requests will be reviewed by event organizers and reasonable accommodations will be made. The requester will be notified of approved accommodations.
About the Harriet Elliott Lecture Series
“NOT SYSTEMS, BUT PEOPLE,
ARE IMPORTANT.”
– Harriet Elliott
Started in 1948, the Harriet Elliott Lecture Series (HELS) is one of UNC Greensboro’s oldest and most established lecture programs. Each year, HELS brings distinguished speakers to campus to present fresh insights into key issues in the social and behavioral sciences.
The series honors the pioneering professor, Harriet Wiseman Elliott, who taught political science and served as Dean of Women at the university from 1913-1947.
Previous Events
HELS 2024-25
Stress & Us: Life Adversity by Other Names
Hosted by the Department of Psychology, the 2024-25 Harriet Elliott Lecture Series highlighted the insidious ways that life stress, sometimes under different monikers, impacts our lives, our communities, and our health – and what we can do about it. Speakers focused on the effects of discrimination on physical health broadly and cardiovascular functioning specifically, the role of socioeconomic inequality in early life adversity and brain development, acculturation stress and health, and the role of identity socialization in resilience.
HELS 2023-24
Democracy in crisis
Organized by the Department of Political Science, the 2023–24 Harriet Elliott Lecture Series explored Democracy in Crisis. The past decade has seen democratic systems come under attack both in the United States and abroad. Our distinguished speakers examined the sources and dynamics of democracy’s challenges and responses – concentrating on historical and international examples of democratic breakdown and rebirth, democracy’s fraught relation to American racial politics and political behavior, and potential avenues for revitalizing democracy for the future.
Past Speakers
Each year, one of the following UNCG departments takes its turn hosting the Harriet Elliott Lecture Series:
Sociology; Political Science; Psychology; Communication Studies; History; Anthropology; Geography, Environment, and Sustainability; and Economics.
Led by these departments, HELS has brought the following speakers to campus, among many others:
- Dr. Ruha Benjamin, Sociologist (2023)
- Dr. Lisa Cook, Economist (2022)
- Dr. Robert Musil, President & CEO of the Rachel Carson Council
- Tijan Dorwanna, former member of Ghana Dance and Kalifi Dance ensembles
- Dr. Alex Smith, Assistant Professor of Percussion at University of Central Missouri
- Dr. Rick Potts, Paleoanthropologist and director the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History
- Dr. Lonnie Bunch, Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
- Dr. John D’Emilio, Professor Emeritus of History and Gender and Women’s Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago
- Dr. Lawrence Frey, Professor of Communication at University of Colorado Boulder
- Dr. R. Keith Sawyer, Professor of Education at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill
- Scott Barry Kaufman, Cognitive Psychologist
- Dr. Jennifer Drake, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Brooklyn College
- Thomas E. Mann, W. Averell Harriman Chair and Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution
- Dawn Porter, Founder of Trilogy Films
- David Owen, Staff Writer for The New Yorker
- Dr. John Hawks, Paleoanthropologist and Professor of Anthropology at University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Barbara Martinez Jitner, Human rights activist, Writer, and Director
- Ishmael Beah, Author
- David Zarefsky, Owen L. Coon Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University
- J.W. Harrington, Economic Geographer
- Dr. Katherine Newman, Professor of Urban Studies at Harvard University and Dean of Social Science at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
- Matthew Fox, Founder and President of the University Creation Spirituality
- Katherine Miller, Professor of Speech Communication and Director of the Center for the Study of Communication and Health at Texas A&M University
- Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, Author and Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Washington.
- Orson Scott Card, Novelist
- John Barlow, Technological Author, Speculator, and Digital Communications Specialist
- James Miller, Lecturer at Harvard
Series History
Harriet Wiseman Elliott taught political science on this campus from 1913 until 1935, when she became Dean of Women. Professor Elliott was a pioneer in the women’s rights and suffrage movements and served during the 1940’s as presidential appointee under the Roosevelt administration. Her activities included Consumer Commissioner on the Advisory Commission to the Council of Defense and U.S. delegate to the 1945 U.N. Conference on Education, Science, and Cultural Organization in London. In the year following her death, the Women’s College of the University of North Carolina established the Harriet Elliott Social Science Forum in her memory. The Social Science Forum has evolved over the years into the Harriet Elliott Lecture Series-one of UNCG’s premier events.
For more information on the Harriet Elliott Lecture Series, please contact:
- Dr. Maura Heyn, Associate Dean (mkheyn@uncg.edu)
- Anna Marie Rogers, Assistant to Dr. Heyn (amrogers3@uncg.edu)
- Dr. Charles Egeland, HELS Chair (cpegelan@uncg.edu).
PHYSICAL ADDRESS:
105 Foust Building
1010 Administration Drive
Greensboro, NC 27412